Open an Avid or Premiere Pro project and keep cutting

Projects move. A freelancer picks up a show halfway through, or a cut arrives from another facility with a note that says “can you take it from here”. B/side opens the project you were handed, so you start from the cut and not from a blank timeline.

From Premiere Pro

On Creator and every plan above it, drop in the Premiere Pro project and the cut opens. A reframe arrives as the move it is, with its keyframes, so a slow push on an interview still pushes. A clip somebody actually reframed is told apart from one that was never touched, so you are not left guessing which boxes were deliberate.

From Avid

On Creator and every plan above it, open an AAF and the cut arrives with its transitions, speed changes, markers and layers. On the Production plan you can drop in the whole Avid project folder, and its bins, cuts and multicam groups open intact, including groups whose cameras span several cards, with every shot on the right file at the right frame. It ingests every clip in the project’s bins, not only the ones its cuts use. You see which of the drives the bins name are plugged in to a computer running A/Side. Plug one in later and its clips come in the way you chose, and everyone on the project is told when it starts.

The media comes with it. B/side finds the footage on the drives plugged into your computers and asks you once whether to ingest proxies, or proxies and originals. Before you choose, it shows how much cloud space and how much time each option takes, and it names any drive that is missing, so you know what to plug in.

Effects that Avid and B/side both have arrive applied. A shot’s level, pan and EQ, a graphic keyed over the picture, and a shot Avid reformatted to fit the frame come across the way Avid had them, and a camera LUT on an Avid shot comes across with it.

Set a clip up once, as you would in Avid: turn a sideways phone clip upright, crop it, fit or fill the frame, or stack LUTs on it. Every use of it in every cut plays that way. And because B/side uses the Media Composer keyboard and layout, an Avid editor is at home from the first keystroke.

Nothing goes missing quietly

Anything that does not come across is named on the frame where it sits. You see it in the cut at the point it matters, so you know what to redo before the online rather than finding out during it. Nothing is dropped without telling you.

Why it matters

The first day on an inherited project is usually spent finding out what you have. When the cut plays as it was and the gaps are named, that day goes on the edit instead.

It also makes it easier to say yes to work. If a client’s project is in Premiere Pro or Media Composer, you can open it and keep going.